McConnell: Obama's 'hard-left' agenda would 'sink' country

McConnell said that Obama on Monday outlined a “left-wing” agenda that promoted big government instead of reaching out to Republicans in order to address fiscal issues facing the country.

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“Gone is the post-partisan rhetoric that propelled him onto the national stage and into the White House; in its place, an unabashedly left-wing appeal for more bureaucratic control and centralized power in Washington,” McConnell said. “And anybody who disagrees with their new approach isn’t just wrong, they’re not just standing in the way of progress, they’re malevolent. They’re the bad guys.”

Lawmakers are working to avoid automatic spending cuts this spring and instead come up with a larger agreement to address the deficit. McConnell said Obama’s “adversarial tone” doesn’t help both parties coming together for a bipartisan deal.

“I’d like to suggest this morning that the president rethink the adversarial tone he’s adopted in recent weeks,” McConnell said. “Our problems are simply too urgent, and too big, for the president to give up on working with us.

“If he refuses, if he insists on spending the next four years pushing a polarizing, hard-left agenda instead, I assure him he’ll meet a determined opposition not only from Republicans in Washington, but from the very people he seems to believe are squarely on his side in the push to remake government in his image.”

Democrats have suggested that there are still some tax increases, such as closing loopholes that would generate revenue and lower the deficit. But Republicans have said even such increases wouldn’t cover the future federal expenses caused by entitlements, which is why entitlement reform is necessary in any deal.

“Failing to reform the entitlement programs of the last century now is the best way to guarantee they no longer exist in their current form. I mean, you could practically hear the ring of the cash register with every new promise the president made,” McConnell said. “At a time when we can all see the failure of such policies by simply turning on the news, he seemed blissfully unaware of the fact that from Athens to Madrid, the sad, slow death of the left’s big government dream is on display for all to see.

“The president’s vision of an all-powerful government that rights every wrong and heals every wound may warm the liberal heart, but it’s completely divorced from experience and from reality.”

McConnell used a chart to explain that because Baby Boomers are starting to enter the age of entitlement eligibility, it would drastically increase federal spending unless reforms are made. He said Washington has to address its “spending addiction,” not tax more in order to put the federal government on firm fiscal footing.